The prisons system was “teetering on the edge of disaster” after being run “so hot for so long” by the previous government, prisons minister Lord Timpson has said, while speaking for the first time publicly since taking the role.
Addressing delegates at a meeting of the Prison Governors’ Association in Nottingham, the Labour peer said that changes including emergency early release measures were “quite frankly, a rescue effort”.
“We only have to look at the recent disorder on our streets to see how close to catastrophe we came,” he said.
“We brought the violence to an end, but in the process, we came dangerously close to running out of prisons entirely.”
Lord Timpson, the boss of high street retailer Timpson, was appointed in July by the incoming Labour government.
He has previously expressed his preference for rehabilitation and community sentencing – as opposed to lengthy jail terms for certain offences – and has said a third of people should not be behind bars.
Around 10% of employees at his company are ex-offenders, and in Sir Keir Starmer’s words, the 53-year-old businessman “walks the walk”.
The government is set to conduct a review of sentencing policy as the service continues to grapple with an overcrowding crisis.
On Tuesday, he hinted at an imminent announcement.
“We will carry out a review of sentencing with a focus on how it both protects the public and reduces reoffending. We’ll soon be in a position to share the terms of reference and announce its chair,” he said.
The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, has suggested that the sentencing review will help alleviate overcrowding problems but has warned of capacity problems again soon, perhaps within a year.
“The population has increased and will continue to increase, despite government [early release] measures they’ve made, in a year or so’s time we will have to be thinking again about what we do”, he told Sky News.
“The sentencing review will help”, he said.
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Tom Wheatley, the President of the Prison Governors’ Association condemned the overuse of prison sentences where alternatives would be more effective, comparing it to “prescribing surgery for the common cold”.
“We need to be clearer about what prison can actually do, for who, at what cost, and with what risks,” he said.
The backdrop to this conference is one of rising violence, an overcrowding capacity crisis, and problems with drugs across the prison estate.
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Lord Timpson told the conference nearly half of prisoners have a history of drug misuse, while jails were “a sweet shop for drugs.”
Mr Taylor told Sky News the ingress of drugs via drones is “the number one” challenge facing the prison service at the moment.
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While the public is told it’s a system the government “inherited”, Lord Timpson alluded to a timeframe for reform.
“Culture change doesn’t happen overnight”, he said. “In my experience, it can take anywhere from three to five years to really move an organisation on.”
